


Lark Song

by Serindrana



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke says she thinks in birdsong whenever Anders is around; Isabela thinks that'd a load of rubbish (maybe), and Fenris is curious. Set between Acts 2 and Acts 3, Fenris/Isabela primary.</p><p>A gift for JanieJanine; the Hawke in question is her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lark Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janiejanine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janiejanine/gifts).



Mountains, Isabela had decided, were stupid, pointless things. Well, not _pointless_ ; there were enough spires and crags and sharp pebbles that somehow made it into her boots despite the fact that they were thigh-high. But being in them never led to anything good.

Ignoring, of course, Fenris's almost-promise of _later_.

The walk out wasn't nearly as long as the walk in, the Vimmarks falling away behind them with every mile until they were back on the relatively flat plains that would take them to Kirkwall. There was grass, some trees, things that spoke of water. Of course, Anders still seemed to limp, if not physically than psychically, leaning on Hawke more often than not and sitting alone until she dragged him to the fire. Isabela joined in with the teasing until it became clear that what the healer needed wasn't laughter but time.

 _Grey Wardens_ , Isabela thought as she settled close by the fire, boots off and toes wiggling in the sandy soil that wasn't sandy enough. _Always cranky_.

"Enjoying yourself?" murmured the other cranky member of their party, and Isabela rolled onto her back with her arms behind her head to look up at him.

"Always and forever," she said with the flash of a grin and a laugh. "Freedom always feels good."

"It does." Fenris's lips quirked, just a little, barely enough for the light to catch, and he lowered himself to the ground next to her, close enough to touch. He didn't, instead looking beyond her and into the fire. "... Hawke is not revelling in it as much as she should, though."

Isabela huffed and shrugged, as if it were nothing, but she had noticed it too. Darkspawn could be killed. Demons could be killed. Even age-old Tevinter magisters, ugly beyond reckoning and spouting nonsense, could be killed (albeit with a few singed heels and zapped fingers). But there were some enemies that could not be fought off.

Anders sat by Hawke, his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands, and though his lips moved even Isabela couldn't hear him for the distance and the crackling fire between them. Hawke was walking her fingers along Anders' sleeve, but then she stopped, her smile turning into the brittle thing Isabela could recognize from a mile away. The smile that said _I'll never stop smiling, not for you, but Maker help me it hurts_.

Isabela turned away from the tableau, shifting onto her side to face Fenris.

"Glad to be out of that pit?" she asked, reaching out to dance her fingertips lightly over his knee.

He huffed. "You have asked me that every time we've spoken. The answer has not changed."

She let her smile broaden, easing away at least the surface tension of the scene at her back. It wasn't her place to be, no matter how much she cared about Hawke, no matter how much she owed her. This was her place, by the same fire, and Fenris sitting by her and not flinching as she stroked at the inner seam of his leggings was an added bonus.

Isabela supposed she was lucky, even with the stones in her boots.

"And what about your answer to when we get back to the city?" she asked, innocent as a kitten even if her hand was halfway up his thigh. He finally moved to bat it away.

"It still stands - not in front of everyone."

This time, he didn't blush, and she pulled her hand away with a mock-sigh. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to get smashed in the Hanged Man like last time-"

He touched her shoulder, and she paused.

"We could also," he said, slowly, considering, "get a room at the Blooming Rose. Less vomit and death all around."

"That's what you think," Isabela replied, but she was already laughing - and she thought she heard Hawke's answering giggle from across the fire, and wasn't that what it was all about?

 

\--

 

What they had was something Isabela never felt like putting a label on. Fenris didn't mind, though sometimes he wondered what exactly went on behind her eyes, what words she thought but didn't speak. Once, he asked her how she thought, when they sat in the mansion, it crumbling down around them, him stiff-backed and her draped boneless around him. One of her manuscripts was on the floor at his feet, abandoned for the moment.

"How do you think?" he asked, nudging it with one bared toe.

She laughed. "How? Like, how often? _"_

"No _._ " He fought for the words, trying to put them in order. They were elusive. They were always elusive after Isabela walked him through another page of reading. She and Hawke alternated lessons; where Hawke encouraged with sly jokes and hearty laughs, Isabela urged him on with dirty books and seemingly endless patience (as long as he had wine and she had _something_ ). He tracked each word down and shoved it into order before asking, "How? When you think, is it like speaking?"

"Sometimes." Isabela shrugged, walking fingers along his thigh up to his hip. She went no further than that, glancing up to him. "Sometimes it's pictures. Or ideas. Why?"

"Hawke said something the other day. To Varric," he said, nodding that imperceptible amount that made her edge her fingers beneath the waistband of his leggings. _Endless patience_. Somehow in the five or so years they had known each other, though he'd never said a word to it, she knew exactly when to wait for him. When not to push. He wondered at it, sometimes, but he never asked.

"Hawke says a lot of things, especially when Varric is around to support her ale habit. What'd she say this time?" Her fingers dipped lower, sliding over the skin of his hip and making him shift for comfort's sake. It earned a chuckle from her, and a kiss to his bared waist.

He batted her away with a waved hand. "Something about... Anders. The way that, when he's around her, all she can think in is endless cloudless skies and birdsong."

"Oh, _really_ ," Isabela said, nose crinkling. "She put you through listening to that? That's just- that's a lot of over-romantic rot, and really, I expected better of her. I mean, that's _bad_. That's more than bad. That's Brennan's poetry to Corff bad."

"Is it?" The memory of the guardsman's overtures to Corff were still too fresh and too uncomfortable to compare to anything else. That the woman had shown her face again within a week had been incredible. Donnic had lost his best. Fenris had taken home three sovereigns that night, and he'd kept one of them as a trophy.

"Well just- _bird_ song? That's a whole load of rubbish. I can guarantee you, Fenris, that nobody actually thinks in birdsong. Not even people in love. It's poetry and stories you tell to little children to make them think that marriage will be perfect and lovely. Or that it can be, at any rate."

"You doubt it."

"I _know_ it doesn't happen that way. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen," she said, shoulders rolling as she sat up and began working the laces of his leggings open. "Or that Hawke doesn't love him more than anything." Her lips at his throat eased the momentary flash of distaste, of distrust, of _she could do better._ "Just that she's thinking like all the rest of us. Ideas and pictures and words and wanting to get a certain somebody undressed and under her."

"That sounds like how _you're_ thinking," Fenris said, and he couldn't help his low laugh.

She grinned, lifting her head so he could see her eyes, even in the low, dying firelight. "That's not so bad, right? I think I have _wonderful_ ideas."

 

\--

 

Hawke spent a lot of time by the Viscount's Keep. _Too_ much time in Isabela's opinion, but she kept the truth of it to herself. She only noticed because when she slipped into Fenris's mansion (even if he'd never call it his, even if he kept waiting for the day Danarius would send somebody to it in search of him) and slipped back out again, sometimes she would see Hawke lurking. Lingering. Sometimes sitting in a high window, blades flashing as she polished them. She was hard to miss.

At least, to a trained eye.

There were no rumors about the Champion except that she was a former smuggler (maybe) and dangerous (definitely) and deadly serious (not at all). Anders did not figure in rumors, somehow, and Isabela had to hand it to Varric - the man knew something. The man worked _magic_ , more than he of the lightning trick now residing in Darktown and sometimes in a mansion up on the hill. Nobody seemed to notice that Karen Hawke went up to the Keep and sometimes stayed there for a whole evening, except for Isabela.

And Isabela would never tell, not unless it was important. She deserved her freedoms just as Isabela kept hers, and Fenris learned his. And perhaps it was something Aveline knew of. Perhaps Big Girl kept her safe, kept an eye on her.

But one day, Hawke caught her watching, and she ended up in the Hanged Man, tucked in a dark corner, with _Hawke_ grilling _her_ as to what she'd been doing in Hightown.

"You know," Isabela said with a shrug and a grin, "mucking about."

"With Fenris?"

"No, with an equally brooding beautiful-eyed elf," she said with a laugh, leaning back in her chair and tipping it until she could place her feet on the table, legs crossed at the ankle. There were no rocks in her boots, not here in Kirkwall, just dust from Fenris's mansion and the lingering memory of his fingers rolling the joints of her toes until she had sighed with pleasure and let him kiss his way up her body.

"So you two really are-?" Hawke asked with a grin, leaning forward and tilting her tankard so far forward that the barely-more-than-piss-water inside almost dribbles out. "Like, you haven't just been messing with everybody?"

"I've been messing with _him_ ," Isabela shrugged.

Hawke hesitated, then added, "And with others?"

"Well, you know." But Hawke didn't know, not really, and Isabela wasn't exactly sure that she was willing to say out loud that her number of partners had dropped steadily, and that since returning from the Vimmarks, it had been _just_ Fenris. Just Fenris a few times a week, if not more, in just about every way she could that stepped lightly around his past. But it had only been a few months, and she still had time to return to form.

It was just nicer, to only have to think about one bed for a little while. Sometimes she enjoyed the break. It wasn't like this was the first time she'd found somebody she wanted to just relax with, to not have to _learn_ in the same way a new partner needed.

"He seems happy," was all Hawke said as she sat back, but that grin on her face was too self-satisfied. "And he's having an easier time of reading these days, I've noticed."

"We practice." Isabela shrugged and finished off her own mug, tossing the tankard back onto the table and watching it spin on its rim for a moment before settling upright. "Is this an interrogation, Hawke? You know I don't like those unless they include Orlesian feather rods and some chains."

"Want me to get those?" Hawke laughed, grinning and sitting back in mimic of Isabela's pose, albeit with less flashed thigh. "But no, not an interrogation. I just... am glad. That he's enjoying himself. It's good to see him smile every once in a while, you know?"

Isabela couldn't help the sly little smile. "Oh, I know. And the _other_ expressions I can get him to make..."

 

\--

 

"Oh, a room at the _Rose_. You shouldn't have!" Isabela laughed and sank back into the rather over-fluffed bed, and Fenris watched, standing awkwardly just by the closed (and locked, thank you) door. She'd already commented on this building being, in fact, _the_ Rose at least four times, and he didn't think she would tire of it any time soon.

If that made him smile, he covered it quickly with a cough and a glance up the expanse of her thigh.

"Well-" he said, then faltered, and went to open the wine instead. Orlesian wine.

"What's it all for?" she asked, propping herself up to watch him. Her kerchief had slipped, and she reached up idly to tug it free. She only did that when feeling supremely relaxed, and- yes, there, she was wiggling out of her boots and socks and wriggling her toes.

He knew her very well. Too well, likely, but as he poured he managed a relatively nonchalant shrug. It was a talent.

"It's... been a year."

"A year?" That made her pause, made her quirk an eyebrow, and for a moment she was still.

Right. He took a deep breath and held out one of the cups to her. "Of- us. Whatever it is we're doing." Her brow furrowed, and he continued, words tumbling a little as they fell faster from his lips. "And it seemed like an occasion to be marked. By company, if you want it, and if not, more wine and more... me."

 _That_ , at least, brought a shower of laughter from her, and a grin, and the tension in him began to uncurl at last. She wasn't saying _oh Pups, you've got it all wrong_ or _a year, Maker, never meant for_ ** _that_** _to happen_ , and was instead looking- flushed. Enticing.

He took a drink.

"Company?" Isabela asked, reaching out with a toe to nudge his thigh. "Company as in, invite Adriano up here for a romp with us? My, but you're getting adventurous."

"It's all the caves Hawke takes us to," Fenris said, eyes crinkling with good humor and the last relaxing. "All the adventuring must have rubbed off on me."

"Mm, adventuring and rubbing. I like where this is going." He watched her raise the cup to her lips, sip, and then grin again. "And the wine. The wine is good. Courtesy of our lovely Tevinter bastard?"

"The very same," Fenris said, and this time he chuckled.

"To fucking him right up the ass, unless he enjoys it," Isabela said as she lifted her cup and laughed again. He wondered, briefly, if she'd already been drinking - then decided it was a stupid question and met her toast with a nod.

"And as," she continued after finishing off her cup and holding it out for more, "for companions- do you want one? Or two, or seven? I'm sure they'd be more than willing to help us celebrate."

"I- that's-"

"Not a good question, I know," she said, leaning close enough to slide an arm around his waist and pull him closer. He barely tipped the wine bottle up in time to avoid spilling it all down her front - though knowing her, she would enjoy it and simply ask him to clean it all up. With tongue. Gleefully.

"Here's a better one," she continued, quieter, with a leg hooked around him as well. "Do you want _any_ companions?"

He considered it, finishing his cup of wine and tossing it aside without a thought. It was a celebration, after all, and a bottle worked just as well as a cup to drink from. More important was the question - and what Isabela would think.

He had offered, after all, and yet-

"I'd rather it just be us. If you don't mind," he said, daring a glance to her. _How do you think, and what of_?

He'd pay to know, in that instant. If he was overstepping whatever agreement they had, if he was not adventurous enough, if he was presumptuous. A year seemed like such a thing, a statement that _running_ was over, that he had roots now. Isabela was only so much stronger than working with Hawke, but she _was_ a stronger link. And he... he had let her in. She knew more of him than anybody else he knew.

And she didn't judge. Or at least, not for long.

He hoped she wouldn't judge him now.

Fenris watched as she finished off her second cup and tossed it aside, too, then took the bottle from him and leaned right up against him as she stretched an arm down to set it on the floor. That done, she wound herself around him and then tugged him downwards onto the bed with her, with a chuckle and a whisper of, "That's just fine."

He chuckled with relief, catching his weight on one outstretched hand.

 

\--

 

He left the gauntlets on for the first round, and if Isabela had far more scratches and bruises than usual at the end of it, it came with the satisfaction of _finally_ knowing what it felt like. She'd been wondering for years. _Ages_.

She kissed a path along his neck and shoulder, tracing just beside lyrium lines with her tongue. That had taken time, too, to get him to trust her enough that he let her focus attention on his brands. Never directly, no - that could hurt, or overwhelm, and that was no good at all. But just beside them, the skin was tender. She suckled at a spot by his collarbone, and he shuddered, groaning and pressing his head back against the pillow.

"Shh," she murmured, breathing cool air over it and watching him shiver and his skin goosepimple. "That's a darling."

" _Darling_ ," he said, half-huff and half-sigh. "Oh, wonderful. I'm sure Hawke will love hearing that."

Isabela couldn't help her laugh. "That she will. She has apparently been listening in to our little sneaky conversations with quite a bit of interest."

" _Sneaky_ ," he said, rolling his eyes and staring up at the ceiling, even as one of his hands (now bare, and likely a good thing) traced lazy patterns on the small of her back. "You have an odd idea of the world."

"We all do," she said, shaking her head, grinning as the tickle of hair over his skin made him twitch and inhale sharply. She continued her path down, moving to his sternum, the slightest jut of a rib. He really did need to eat more, even if it was just Corff's home cooking. That house he lived in him did no services except privacy - but privacy was good for him, too.

It was all a little too complicated. The hollow of his navel was more interesting, and she tongued at it a moment, until his back arched and she felt the half-hard jut of his erection against her breast.

"There we go," she said, looking up along his body with a grin. He did his best to look put-upon - until she slipped a hand between his legs, which he parted eagerly. "Good little lover-boy."

" _Lover b-_ you're doing this on purpose," he groaned, then sighed as she took his length into her mouth, suckling gently at the tip a moment before easing him in inch by inch. She toyed at his ass with a single fingertip, teasing just at the entrance, just enough to bring him back to full hardness in her mouth and buck up into her.

She pulled away long enough to wink. "Maybe," she said, then licked a long line up the underside of his cock, considering what, exactly, to do with him. How did one celebrate a year of sharing a bed on occasion, of fucking a few times in a back alley and more often in the Hanged Man or at his place or once even in Hawke's mansion during her Feastday party?

How did one celebrate three months of _exclusivity_ , that nobody but her actually knew about? And that she wasn't ready to share, in case in meant something?

She nuzzled against his cock as she thought, then stretched up along his body, nipping at the underside of his jaw. Her jewelry dragged between them, and she grinned with a sudden flash of inspiration.

Gold always _was_ good for getting the creative juices going.

Sitting back on her heels, she winked again and reached to untie her kerchief, skewed from earlier but still in place. She heard a huff of a laugh from deep in his chest, and Fenris simply leaned back and watched, pulling his legs back together and crossing them at the ankle, as if somehow the removal of the last scrap of fabric on her was a whole striptease in and of itself.

Maybe it was. She usually left it on.

Winding the fabric around her fingers, she leaned in. She dragged her hand along his chest, then down to take his length in hand, fabric and flesh curling around it as she stroked him slowly. He groaned her name, a breathless mutter of, "Isabela," that made her want to wiggle every inch of her body, and when she released him he muttered a curse in Arcanum.

She watched his face for a moment, then kissed at his cheek. "I think I know just what to do with you, _lover boy_." She couldn't help her own laugh, especially with how he rolled his eyes despite his flushed cheeks, his tense hips. "Do you trust me?" she purred, and it took him a moment to respond. But when he did, it was with a nod. The pause hadn't been too long, she thought, just enough that he was making sure of a gut reaction.

She didn't want him just trying to please her (though that had its own merits in other places, other times).

Isabela smiled, as she folded the kerchief into a strip, then brought it up in front of his eyes. "I'll take care of you, no worries."

"Will you oil me until I glisten?" he murmured as she tied it tight behind his head, and her laugh was half-cough.

"You remember that," she said, not even a question, and to her relief he chuckled.

"I read the book."

Oh. _Well_ , then. "And when," she asked, reaching behind her neck to unclasp her necklaces, "did you do _that_? And when were you planning on telling me?"

"Last week. And never." He had the faintest little grin, until the metal slid around his throat. She paused before clasping it, looking for any sign that _this_ , perhaps, went too far- but he nodded after a moment's thought, the same as with the blindfold, and she clasped it all into place.

He looked rather stunning, blinded and bedecked, and she thumbed one of his nipples with the thought of what he would look like with even more adornments. Though the brands certainly did well enough on their own.

"Never? Oh, Fenris. You know I like feedback," she chided, sitting back to take it all in and to think. "Did you like it, at least?"

"It wasn't horrible," he conceded, but it was with a faint smile, and whatever lingering tension over his good opinion still remained slipped off, like a pair of those ratty torn trousers Hawke was always finding.

The present, after all, was much more interest than the past - especially when the past seemed to be resolved.

"Tell me what you want me to do to you," she asked, throwing a leg over his hips and sinking down until his cock was caught between their bodies. He jerked his hips up, but the angle was wrong and all he did was slide against her, not finding purchase or even much friction.

He muttered another curse in Arcanum, and she made a mental note to ask him to teach her some later.

"I- anything. You can do anything," he finally bit out, and she froze. She'd been halfway to pinching his nipple, worrying it until it was swollen and aching, but she stopped moving with her hand half an inch from his chest.

"Anything?"

He groaned again and, finding her hips with his hand, grabbed and pulled her hips against him again. "Anything. Just- _anything_."

"Freely offered?"

"Yes!"

She hadn't expected that. She had hoped for it, in the little bit of her mind that knew a little too much about slavery, that stayed her hand and kept her tiptoeing around things that might make him nervous, uncomfortable, might send him back to another time and another life. But she had never expected it.

She wasn't sure what to do with that amount of trust.

She wasn't sure if she'd _earned_ it.

But he was panting and flushed, fingers flexing and digging into her ass, and she had to decide something. Swallowing, Isabela leaned forward and kissed him, light and slow. He didn't let it stay that way, of course, deepening it and exploring with his tongue paths he'd already mapped long ago, and she fell into it, even as she rose up and reached between them.

She'd been prepared for something delightfully wicked, and the room was certainly equipped for it. She had counted over half a dozen seemingly mundane items about the room that would make wonderful ticklers, a flogger or two, and there was almost definitely a phallus under the bed. And yet all of those things seemed like nothing beside what he'd just offered her.

The only appropriate thing she could think of was to guide his cock to her entrance and sink down happily onto it, moaning into his mouth and rolling her hips just right to make him twitch.

His hands on her hips eased only as she found a rhythm for them, deep and slow. She ground against him on every downthrust, clenched in patterns that drove him wild, and used every bit of knowledge about every inch of flesh she had access to, fingers searching and lips leaving his to suckle at his throat, where the golden collar still left a strip of skin accessible. Her jewelery stuck to them both, glinted in the light and made music against itself and against skin, dull thuds when it clung to her and then fell back against him, shifting jingles as it shuddered against itself.

He clung to her, lips parted and head tilted back as she worked them both. She waited for a quip, a challenge, but none came, and she teased herself with the languid pace until she trembled and twitched out of the rhythm. Beneath her, he tensed and jerked against her, muttered curses and whispered and moaned.

And then she stopped. A strangled protest rose in his throat, but it stilled as she moved, bringing her legs forward, heels nudging at his side. He sat up and she leaned back, wrapping her legs around his hips. She saw his lips quirk, and then he surged forward, pushing her back onto the bed, lips finding her skin by long practice, long familiarity. He marked her skin where the gold usually hid it, nipping and sucking as he made his first thrust - long, slow, and deep, echoing what she had done to him.

She dug a heel into his back, and he chuckled, thrusting again, harder.

"Oh, Maker's _tits_!" she gasped as he did it again, his pace punishing and delicious harsh. He laughed, then caught his lips against the underside of her jaw, forcing her head back as he snapped his hips forward against his, driving into her. She arched her back and rolled her hips in time, surrendered over to him with a laugh and a sigh and a groan, a hiss of his name when he bowed his back and thrust _up_.

She felt her kerchief against her skin, then felt it catch and slide while he nuzzled. It fell away from him, and when he lifted his head, she opened her eyes to see him gazing back.

It was all straightforward and simple, the most basic of acts, and even a little sappy with how his lips were curved and parted, his eyes fixed on hers. And yet there was an aspect of it, in the flex of his shoulders and in the way her kerchief looked over her jewelry around his throat, that was undeniable, enticing and intoxicating and more, if just by a little bit, than two acquaintances fucking.

She opened her mouth to say something, to laugh it off, but he kissed her, hungry and possessive and she laughed and moaned instead.

One of his hands slipped between them as he rose up just enough to thumb at her clit, to pump his hips at a new angle, one that left her arching and sighing and thrashing for more, sweat-slicked and eager and drifting already. A bite at her lip had her teetering on the edge; a playful swipe of his tongue led her over it in a shout and a shuddering, heaving mass, dragging him down onto her and tightening her legs to grind him down against her.

It took him all of five thrusts more, five that were perfect and almost _too_ perfect, and then he pulled back just enough to growl her name and something else as he spent. His whole body went rigid, and his eyes closed, his head dipping forward until he pressed it against hers.

His breath ghosted over her lips, and she twitched her hips against his again.

She shoved him over after another shuddering roll of her body. As much as she loved the feel of a body still in her in the aftermath, she wanted more the ability to look at him, all of him, and to touch every exposed bit. She stayed close, pressed up to his side, and she mumbled, "Good performance," just loud enough that she heard his snort, faint and low in his throat.

Her hand feathered over his belly, and he tweaked her nipple in retaliation, tugging on the small ring that pierced it.

"Not fair," she said, squirming.

"Then let me rest," he countered, and she settled down against him with another laugh, a wave of her hand as she lifted it from his skin.

The nice thing, she decided, about a repeat lover - one of many, especially about him in particular - was that she could actually feel comfortable in the quiet after, curled up in a bed without speaking and without playing. She could catch her breath and not feel like she was sending a message she didn't want to. She could relax.

She could relax a lot around Fenris, if she were being honest.

 _A year_.

It didn't seem like so much - she'd been in Kirkwall for way too many of them - and yet.

Beneath her, Fenris stirred, a creasing of his brow, a slight frown on his lips.

"Hawke..."

"Mm?" If she were a jealous woman, she might have thought he was murmuring Hawke's name because he was half-dreaming and wishing she was the rogue in his bed, instead of some Rivaini tramp from the Hanged Man. But she knew Fenris better than that - and herself. "What about her?"

"Anders is- not doing very well."

"I've noticed."

It was hard not to. The Vimmarks had left lasting scars, scars that Isabela didn't know the extent of, but could guess at. And then there was his glowing friend. When Hawke went to the Viscount's Keep, a part of Isabela wondered if it wasn't to stray from home for just a few hours - to think, to ponder, to consider.

"But she thinks in birdsong whenever he's around, remember?" Isabela said with a smirk, nestling closer against Fenris.

"She does indeed," he murmured, then chuckled, and she felt it go through her, low and familiar. "... But I worry."

"I think we all do. For both of them." She could imagine his nose screwing up, and she glanced up, tapping him where his brow furrowed. "For her sake if not for his."

"I- yes."

She smoothed the skin between his eyes and he let her, settling down. "She's a smart girl," Isabela continued. "She'll figure it out - they both will. One way or another."

"Mm," Fenris hummed, and she couldn't quite make out to meaning of it. It meant at least that the conversation was over for the moment, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder again. There were so many things in Kirkwall that could make a girl anxious beyond measure. This wasn't one of them, and she set herself to feeling the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his skin, the slight raise just alongside a brand where her fingers played.

Maybe, if she closed her eyes and simply listened to his breathing, she'd hear birdsong.

...

Well, it was a nice idea, at any rate. She'd have to settle for just the thought of wanting him around another night, and another after that, until the day she had a ship of her own and could convince him to give the roll of the sea a little try.

She'd figure it all out. One way or another. And with any luck, it would make an _incredible_ story.


End file.
